Electrical power generation utilizing hydraulic equipment, thermal equipment and nuclear equipment has been known for many years. The use of thermal equipment, such as coal-fired, oil-fired and natural gas-fired power plants, to generate electrical power has become very wide spread in today's world. The use of nuclear power generators, while in use in many different countries, has significantly decreased within the United States due to concerns regarding the danger of exposure to nuclear radiation from the plant. These power generation systems suffer from many similar problems, mainly destruction of the environment and pollution of the environment by the waste products they generate.
In the past electrical power generation was achieved by utilizing hydroelectric power generation plants located within dams. The initial cost of building these plants lead to the use of thermal equipment to generate electrical power. Also, the reduced water flow in certain rivers has not enabled some of these hydroelectric power plants to operate at or near capacity.
There has recently been some interest in the generation of electrical power utilizing wave motion in the ocean or underwater currents in the ocean. However, to date these techniques have been very inefficient and very costly. Also, there has been a growing interest in generation of electric power utilizing solar energy. This has so far proven to be very expensive. Finally, the use of wind to generate electrical power is very old but not widely used. More efficient wind turbines are being developed to reduce the cost of generation of electrical power utilizing the wind.
None of the above noted electrical power generators have yet proven to be both cost effective and non-polluting. One of the largest obstacles facing the use “clean energy” is that the energy is not available “on demand”. Furthermore, there is no means presently available to match the output of clean energy to the demand. As a result, all clean energy not used as and when it is produced is lost. Thus, what is needed in the art is an electrical power storage device that is highly efficient, cost effective, non-polluting, scalable, relatively unrestricted as to its geographical location so that it can be located in various, numerous locations and supply electrical power on demand.